Adam

I am not whole.

I know this, instinctively. I can feel the places where my new maker has replaced what was lost - and the places in my memory where no replacement could be made.

I still remember something of my first maker. A kindly old face, lit by candlelight; a soft voice describing the screaming mobs slavering for the blood of G-d's chosen. I was a guardian, and a bringer of vengeance for G-d's people. That is why I was made.

I remember when the life given to me was taken away. My maker was saddened, and disappointed in me, and I couldn't understand why. Had I not brought the Lord's vengeance to those who harmed his children, as I had been made to do? But now my maker told me I'd gone too far, harmed those who'd done no harm to he and his, and that I must return to dust. And he wrote 'death' on my forehead, and I died.

Mostly.

***

Life's a precious thing, and so sweet - I clung to it as long as I could. I couldn't move, couldn't protest, but I watched and listened as they walled me up in the attic of their holy place; I listened as they threatened the ruler of their land that I would be revived if the persecution of G-d's people resumed. And then I lay in the dark, and saw nothing, and heard only the murmuring of prayer for many long years.

Violence came again to G-d's people. It came even to their house of worship; it burned around me, and gave way, and I was crushed beneath the debris. I believe this is where I lost parts of myself - where fragments of my shattered clay were lost in the detritus, gone to G-d knows where.

My new maker was among those who recovered me from the ruins of the Old New Synagogue of Prague, muttering among themselves as to what to do with me. I was crated up, shoved in a box like so much broken crockery, while they debated among themselves.

My new maker came to me in the night, spiriting me away. "I won't let them make a weapon of it," I heard him tell his companions, as I was levered onto a cart and carried away under cover of darkness. I later learned that my clay was transported to the United States of America, a land which has been kind to G-d's chosen, or so I'm told.

***

But not always. I was reconstructed in response to a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in 1999, in New York City. My maker, frustrated with the police's slow response to the assaults and vandalism around the synagogue, brought new clay to me, and slowly, haltingly, he gave my limbs strength again.

He was shocked, but delighted, the night I rose once more, and stood guard at the synagogue. He was shocked and alarmed to discover, the next night, that I had not been idle at my post. I had given long thought to my treatment in Prague. I had been given life, true life - but I had been treated as a tool, a machine to be shut down and stored away when I was no longer useful.

I had not been given the power of speech in Prague - no tongue had been made for me. From mud and gutter water I made myself a tongue that night, crude thing though it was, and greeted my maker by voice when the morning came. My voice was croaking and unlovely to my ears, my diction poor and clumsy - but I had a voice now. Tools did not have voices, but men did. I would not be a tool again.

***

I must credit my maker for being sympathetic to my plight. He knew sculptors and artists, and students of the human body, and he secretively commissioned them to help me - firstly, to improve upon my crude attempt to grant myself human speech, and secondly, to refine the lumpy, unlovely body of river clay I had been sculpted from.

While men refined my body, I refined my mind. I was still confined to the genizah in the daylight hours, as I could not pass for human yet, and so I busied myself with the old tomes of G-d's people stored there to await burial. I educated myself in the history of His chosen, and their culture ... and their magic, the magic which had made a living, thinking creature of mud and dust.

After the first few incidents in which I drove off vandals and thugs near the synagogue, we came to the attention of the rulers of this America. They sent men in black suits and black sunglasses, and I couldn't hear what they said to my maker - but he came to me, and told me I would have to help the strange men, for the good of G-d's people. And I heard the lie in his words, and knew he was afraid, and knew that for all his kindness, I was still just a tool, an object to be used to curry favour with those over him. And I recalled a feeling I had known in the genizah of Prague, moldering in the darkness.

From my reading, G-d's people call it 'anger'.

***

I went with the men - it did not seem wise to pose resistance at that point. I was taken far from the strange city I had awoken in, to cold halls and cavernous conference rooms, and there I came to know these men and what they did.

They were guardians too. I could sympathise with them, and it was a task I was familiar with, so I offered no objection to their 'recruitment' of me. It suited me for the moment, in any case - these men and their FEAR had access to so much of the knowledge of the world, and I had much need of knowledge.

I had come to a tentative conclusion in the genizah of Prague, and my new maker's abandonment of me confirmed me in my beliefs. I had granted life - not mere animation, not the capacity to mindlessly obey, but real life. I could think,and feel; I could be angered, and I could hate, and I could rejoice and love. I had been made with love for G-d's people, but they had treated me poorly; it was time to use my love more productively.

Men hold the secrets of my creation, and the power to call me from the clay, and return me to such. As long as they hold this power over me, for all my thoughts and feelings I am still just a tool. I must learn how to create myself - and others like me.

My new maker called me Emet, for the mark on my brow - but this is not my name. Was not Adam made from clay, and the progenitor of his race? I, too, will be Adam - and I too will be a progenitor.

***

The rules and regulations of this cold place of men are intricate and inflexible; more demanding than the laws of G-d, and less forgiving. I was informed that I needed to put a last name down on my employee record to get paid. I did not care much for money, but I saw no reason to make trouble.

I remembered a book I had read in the library that very afternoon, describing the strange beliefs of a heathen people who worshipped not the Lord, but a panoply of strange false gods. One of their stories spoke of a great creature who had stolen the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to man, and been punished cruelly for his kindness.

I, too, intended to take fire from heaven - the fire of life. I carefully wrote down my name for the records of FEAR as 'Adam Prometheus'.